Review and Giveaway: Playful Learning
I’m the mother of a 15 month old son, and lately, I’ve been thinking (or realizing) that I need to be more deliberate with how I am teaching him and what I am teaching him. It’s great that he is able to play, explore, and find out new things all on his own, but I want to feel like I had some part with what he is learning. I want to guide his play to maximize the learning capabilities. (Hey, I’m a woman, everything should multitask, right?)
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| from Playful Learning |
So that’s why it was so great that Tiffany and I stumbled upon this book Playful Learning by Mariah Bruehl. The whole idea of the book is to create learning experiences through the medium of play in such a way that even the kids don’t really realize how much they are gaining from that experience. It’s just like sneaking the veggies into the chocolate cake, only it’s learning into play.
I loved reading about how the author introduced these playful learning experiences to her kids. She talked about being receptive to how her kids were feeling or what they were already interested in. And then, if the timing and the environment was right, she would jump into the activity that she had pre-planned. And I think that is such a key concept. While I am only just starting out on the planning activities front for Sebastian, I have already met a few failures where I had decided that it was time to do this particular activity, but he was not interested and so it fell flat, and I ended up losing confidence and motivation. So it was so nice to hear from a been-there, done-that mother that had found a working solution.
Mariah Bruehl also takes the time at the beginning of each chapter to talk about the different stages of learning in each of the categories she dives into. It is so helpful to know, beforehand, where my child is and where I am looking for him to be going. I need that kind of direction.
So, even though most of these activities would be better suited for children older than 15 months, I did find some activities that I am excited to incorporate into our form of play. One was the Alphabet Search. This has the child looking around the house for items for each letter of the alphabet and taking pictures of them in order to make a book. Now Sebastian might not be able to help me find the pictures yet, but I think he will thoroughly enjoy seeing pictures of his natural habitat. And if I can teach him his ABCs at the same time, yay for momma. 🙂
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| The beginnings of our Alphabet Search |
Another activity that I thought would be great for Sebastian now is the Family Puppet Theater. This one also involves pictures, but of each family member. You make popsicle stick puppets of each member, and for older children, this can be a teaching tool about role-playing and understanding each other. But for Sebastian, I think he will enjoy watching miniature Mommy and Daddy bounce around.
And since we enjoyed this book so much, we have the pleasure of offering one up to you for free. (So thank you, Playful Learning!) Here’s what you have to do to have a chance to win:
This giveaway is through Rafflecopter. So, you just have to follow the instruction on the widget to enter. The first entry (the comment) is mandatory, but we love multiple entries. Please note: You have to leave a comment on the blog post itself not just with the widget. This was confusing to me too, but the widget does not make a comment appear on the post. Please let me know (christina@playeatgrow.com) if you have any trouble with entering. The giveaway starts today and ends at 12:01 am Friday morning. The winner will be announced on Friday afternoon. So enter now!
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Right now I currently use traditional holidays like Valentine's day as an opportunity to teach my kids about God. So, we are talking about God's love right now… we do crafts, sing songs, read books, and use puppets to help them learn.
I am teaching through play this week by talking about Groundhog Day. We have read several books (fiction and non-fiction) about groundhogs and Groundhogs Day. In doing so we have learned new vocabulary (like burrow and hibernate) and reviewed the seasons. We have colored pictures, done mazes, and tomorrow we'll be making a groundhog craft (so cute – he pops up out of a cup!). For our "grand finale" on Thursday I'm hoping we'll be able to watch Phil on TV, and we'll also have a special snack and put on a groundhog day performance for Grandma, who is coming to visit.
I love both of your ladies' ideas of using the current holidays (or weirdy days in the case of Groundhog day) to be the starting point for teaching. I have found that having a theme makes it so much easier to have a direction about where you are going. Plus, having a key word makes it that much simpler to search the internet for ideas! 🙂
This book sounds amazing! I've also been thinking about my son's "quality of play" lately and really scrutinizing a lot of the toys we have collected over the past year and a half. I've begun to weed out a lot of the ones that don't really serve a purpose, or aren't as adaptable to become objects he can actually learn from (and not just push a button and get the same response over and over and over….;)
Great blog post Christina!
Tiff, you guys were always great about "play with a purpose." One of many qualities I admire in your family. =) -Lynne H.
We do all sorts of learning through play around here! With kids 7, 5, 2, and 7 weeks, there are all kinds of toys that come out at once. Just allowing the kids to play with them together is HUGE! Sometimes, we try too often to categorize things and forget to allow kids the opportunity to use their imaginations to mix the toys up a bit. So… for example. Jenga becomes a load of logs that fell on the train track that Thomas has to clear. The Play-Doh basketball shooter becomes a catapult for the Star Wars guys to fly into outer space. The other day, we had a train track set up, and pirates (Playmobil) came and attacked the island. They took over the train lines, and all the freight cars were forced to carry the gold treasure to safe hiding in a cave underground.
The Magic Tree House books have been a wonderful source of inspiration for play in our house. Our 7-year-old reads them, tells the other kids about it, and they act out all kinds of things from the books that they can't read about themselves. So the olders teach the youngers in this way. Expansion of vocabulary at its best!!!!